The present application is concerned with sample array coding such as picture or video coding.
Parallelization of encoder and decoder is very important due to the increased processing requirements by the HEVC standard as well as by the expected increase of video resolution. Multi-core architectures are becoming available in a wide range of modern electronic devices. Consequently, efficient methods to enable the use of multiple-core architectures are necessitated.
Encoding or decoding of LCUs occurs in raster scan, by which the CABAC probability is adapted to the specificities of each image. Spatial dependencies exist between adjacent LCUs. Each LCU (largest coding unit) depends on its left, above, above-left and above-right neighbor LCUs, because of different components, for instance, motion-vector, prediction, intra-prediction and others. Due to enable parallelization in decoding, these dependencies typically need to be interrupted or are interrupted in state-of-the-art applications.
Some concepts of parallelization, namely wavefront processing have been proposed. The motivator for the further study is to perform techniques, which lower the coding efficiency loss and thus reduce the burden on the bitstream for parallelization approaches in encoder and decoder. Furthermore, low-delay processing was not possible with the available techniques.
Thus, it is the object of the present invention to provide a coding concept for sample arrays allowing lower delay at comparatively less penalties in coding efficiency.